


Getting Back

by esteefee



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:04:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteefee/pseuds/esteefee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys move in. And buy a shed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting Back

**Author's Note:**

> For casa_mcshep.

John was at the lumber store shopping for a pre-fab shed for their backyard when he suddenly thought, _I can't believe I actually fit in one of these_ , and was suddenly assailed by twenty year-old memories.

Rodney must've thought he was nuts, because John just stood there staring at the damned thing for about five minutes—they hadn't changed much, was the thing. Same dimensions, same corrugated siding. Maybe a little nicer coating on the metal, and better seams. Maybe he wouldn't be able to see the stars through the cracks. Maybe he wouldn't be as cold sleeping in this one.

He actually had to suppress a shiver for a second, and he felt Rodney bumping up against his shoulder.

"I realize this is an epic event, buying a _shed_ ," Rodney said, "but it's hardly on the level of an attack of—"

John elbowed him before Rodney could violate any confidentiality agreements. "This one is fine." John's voice was a little too dry; he knew because Rodney gave him a narrow look, but they were old hands at this by now, and Rodney didn't say anything, not then, and not in the truck, either, with the shed hanging out in the bed along with their new grill and the half a cord of wood tucked inside.

"What's the worst place you've ever slept?" John asked when the silence got to be a little long.

"Discounting missions, I assume, since you were right there along with me. Oh, and also, let's not include hive ships—"

"Let's not."

"Hmmm." Rodney tapped his lips for a second. "I would have to say, then, on a Pullman car on a train in Siberia. This little old lady in the cot below me had brought a thermos full of borscht, and she kept passing beet farts all night long...."

"Niiice." John honked with laughter until Rodney joined in.

When they got back to their place, John was too busy hauling it all out of the truck again and using the cart to move it into the backyard. He was a sweat-soaked mess by the time he was done, and used the bottom half of his shirt to mop his face as he pushed his way past the screen door into the kitchen.

Rodney looked up from the kitchen table where he was typing at his computer. Getting the Wi-Fi network set up had been priority number one, of course.

"Have you finished all your manly chores?" There was a note of amusement in Rodney's voice, but there was fondness there, too, and just a hint of heat overlaying it all; enough that John took his time rubbing his shirt up over his stomach to catch the last drops of free-falling sweat. He may have been getting up in years, but he still had whatever it took to get McKay's motor running.

And that was all he gave a damn about, anyway. He'd wasted too many years not taking what he wanted. Now that he had it, he'd found it was all he needed.

Rodney's eyes tracked downward, and John let his fingertips slip under the waistband of his jeans.

"Oh, nice try with your seductive, seducing ways," Rodney said, the down-turned half of his mouth warring with the smirking side. "We still have a million boxes to unpack."

"Not a million, seriously?" John leaned against their new counter with all his might.

"At _least_ a million. If not a trillion."

"And most of them yours. I mean, how many damned computers do you need, McKay?"

Rodney raised his eyebrows. "Ah. A lot?"

But John had put at least one box aside, the one marked BDRM-NIGHTSTD, and he knew exactly where it was in relation to the mattress, which was covered in plastic and propped up next to the disassembled bed. John figured, two minutes and they could be slipping around on top of the toppled mattress and christening their new house. Jesus Christ. They had a _house_. And a fucking _mortgage._

"Oh, I know that look," Rodney said, getting up and coming over. "Only one cure for that look. And I know exactly where the lube is."

"Great minds," John murmured, following Rodney up their new stairs.

John was right—it took him less than two minutes to find the lube.

The plastic of the mattress stuck to his sweaty knees, making it hard to spread his legs, but it gave him good traction. He had his ass in the air and two fingers slicking himself up inside by the time Rodney was fully undressed.

"God."

John turned onto his back and caught the flush on Rodney's chest and cheeks, the bright blue of his eyes.

"What's gotten _into_ you today?"

"C'mere and find out."

Then Rodney was done talking, which was awesome. For all that Rodney was all words the rest of the time, when they were in bed he went intense and almost silent, all his words reduced to murmurs of _Oh, oh,_ and _Dear God,_ and John's personal favorite, _Yes, John, yes._ Rodney hardly ever said no to anything John wanted, although John didn't generally ask for much, just Rodney's ass and soft skin and pink nipples, and right now his cock and hard hands and that beautiful mouth, kissing his while Rodney's hips kept moving, thrusting forward.

When John came, he looked into Rodney's face and saw, just for a second, someone else's soft smile, John's first, and he thought what an idiot he was, because, _Jesus_ , it had taken him too many goddamned years getting back here.

So with Rodney's cock softening inside him, John lay there, staring up at the Acoustic Santa Fe White of their freshly painted ceiling, and finally let himself think about the shed.

:::

John was just a nugget zoomie on stateside leave when he hitchhiked from Bradley AFB to New Orleans, Louisiana, to go see Mardi Gras. He wasn't sure what he'd find; had some vague idea that fluttered in the pit of his stomach like wings, like freedom.

It was tough catching rides up North; no one had time for him, the cars all shooting by on the Turnpike, and he wasted hours walking past a big orchard in Connecticut, the crisp taste of a stolen apple souring on his tongue before finally someone in a minivan took pity on him and pulled over.

He had better luck the further south he got; also, because he started to get worried he wouldn't make it by Fat Tuesday, he pushed his duffle out in front and put his camo jacket back on, feeling dirty about it, but his thumb started working magic soon enough.

Mardi Gras was amazing—flesh-filled streets and wearing other people's sweat and the thumping drums rising under his blood. John found his feet could dance. Permission was granted freely in bright smiles and plastic golden coins tossed in the air. He drank jägermeisters and Jell-O shots; ate beignets and kissed a pretty girl and listened to real jazz and lost his ass cherry. For the afternoon after he left he rode the high of the new life he'd found and didn't put his dog tags on again until after he'd passed Graceland.

He finally ran into real trouble in Georgia, in a little armpit of a town called Tosha, population 417. The trucker he'd been riding with was red-eyed from too many uppers or something—John tried to keep him talking, and then tried to get him to pull over and take a nap, but Hank wasn't having any of it. He was on too tight a schedule, he said; besides, he knew these routes like the back of his hand.

John didn't figure that mattered much when he'd be driving with his eyes closed, and sat ready to nudge him awake if he saw him nodding, which he did, more than once, but that just pissed ol' Hank off, and just outside of Tosha when John poked Hank in the leg, Hank snapped awake, roaring, "Get offa me you little faggot!" and swung his meaty hand at John's face, jack-knifing the trailer in the bargain.

They didn't quite go over, but it was a near thing, with a couple of cars screeching behind them and people running out of the Stop-N-Sav, and Hank losing his shit and yelling all sorts of crap like it was John's fault and calling him a cocksucker and faggot, and a cocksucking faggot. John didn't stick around to find out if people would be willing to hear his side of the story; he just grabbed his duffle and rabbitted out of there and into the field growing along the road.

It was mid-February, and not very warm out. He ran until he was sure no one was following him, and then took a look around. The stars were out, with a half moon, but there wasn't much to see, anyway. No houses, just the highway and the field of cabbage, with an occasional pre-fab aluminum storage shed for whatever—farm tools, maybe, or fertilizer. John trudged over to the nearest one and saw it wasn't locked, so he hauled it open, then pulled out his Zippo and lit it.

Inside, the shed was piled with sacks and rope. There was just enough room for him to crawl in and sleep until morning, at which point he could walk far enough down the road to hitch his way onward.

He made himself as comfortable as he could in the tight quarters, dragging a couple of sacks over himself for warmth, then trying to sleep in spite of the throbbing ache in his jaw. Through the corner seams he could make out the stars.

This was a nowhere town, and John was nowhere, a million miles from home, anyway, not that he'd had much of one for a while. Just the Air Force, and they took care of him, yeah, but they would kick him out if they knew what he'd been up to this week, if they knew what Hank had called him was true. Of all the places he'd slept in his life this was maybe the worst, inside a pre-fab tool shed in Bumfuck, Georgia. Not what his father would have wanted for him, but then he'd jumped that track a while ago and there was no going back.

There was a knot of ice in his gut and it wasn't going away. John didn't think it ever would. Everything he'd felt this weekend had gotten ruined—the soft smile of that shirtless boy with the piles of purple and green beads around his neck, the way he'd made John dance, pulling him close and teasing him into moving his hips before disappearing into the crowd; the girl he'd kissed in the piano bar who'd sung that beautiful song with her voice so whiskey rough it felt like raw silk against his skin; and Greg, who'd shown John how to finally take a cock inside him, who made it easy without making him feel stupid and inexperienced, who'd made it good, and then had been nice enough to look really disappointed that John had to leave.

All ruined by that asshole and his stupid words.

John shivered his way until morning, and was back on base three days later.

He spent the next twenty years running.

:::

It wasn't a million boxes—more like fifty—and they had most of them unpacked by dinnertime. The bed was a king, with a real box-spring and a brand-new mattress, some special deal Rodney had insisted on for his back. It had cost a small fortune, but John just shook his head and kept his mouth shut.

Going with the flow was his new order of things. He'd finally learned when not to fight. He had Rodney and he had flying, although he wasn't flying as much since he started instructing; but still, he had flying, and he had Rodney, and that was saying a hell of a lot. If they hadn't changed the regs he wouldn't have that much, and he still got to rotate back onto Atlantis two months out of the year, which was more than he'd hoped for when they first rotated him out.

He'd always be grateful to the gene that got him there in the first place, but the fact Atlantis proved itself to be not all that happy when he was gone for longer than ten Earth months made him all the more grateful, because it meant an automatic pass back to see Teyla and Ronon and Torren and Jinto at least for a little while out of the year.

And without the gene, of course, he'd never have found any of this.

"What is with you today, Space Boy?" Rodney tugged the blanket out of his hand and shook it out over the bed. "You keep disappearing on me."

"Sorry, just—" John walked around to the other side and helped tuck in the corners. "Thinking about stuff."

Rodney frowned and smiled at the same time. "Stuff."

"Yeah."

"Uh-huh."

But of course John knew Rodney would never let go of anything so easy. Because after they finished brushing their teeth— _"I thought we agreed this is my side of the sink." "Since when?" "Since obviously I require more room as all you seem to need is a jumbo shaving gel and an industrial strength razor blade."_ —and had engaged in celebratory, if exhausted mutual blow-jobs— _"God, that's good. Keep. With the tongue. Yeah."_ —Rodney settled with his head on John's shoulder and trailed his fingers over the scars on John's ribs, and started talking. About the house, at first, and the stuff they still had left to do, and then about Atlantis and the devices he'd brought back to lord over the other scientists at the SGC. And then about the new class John had coming in next week at Peterson—

"Are you worried about them? Knowing about us, I mean? This will be the first time we've been really, you know, _obvious_ —"

And John suddenly realized what the whole meandering monologue was about.

"I'm not worried." John dropped his hand down to Rodney shoulder to pull him in closer, happy when Rodney made a sound and rubbed his chin against John's chest, even though it felt a little like sandpaper at this hour.

"We can handle the mortgage, you know," Rodney tried next. "Ever since they bumped you up a grade—"

"It's cool. We'll just be careful with spending," John said.

Rodney made an impatient noise, and John smiled a little. He was being unfair, he knew, but it was kind of nice, really, how careful Rodney was being about it. Ten years ago Rodney wouldn't have even tried. Then again, ten years ago John wouldn't have stuck around to be tried _with._

"It was the shed," John said finally. "It reminded me about this trip I took a long time ago. Down to Mardi Gras. I was just a kid. It was my first time on my own, and I got into a little trouble...."

And while John told Rodney about it, it occurred to him that back then he never would have told Rodney the story, either. But then, he'd been alone too long, still trapped in that damned shed.

But now, when Rodney kissed him, saying, "We'll paint it green or something. Stupid shed. Stupid rednecks," John knew he wasn't alone, anymore—that he wouldn't be, ever again.

It wasn't anything he'd done. It was something he was maybe—the gene, he thought, and that didn't seem fair, but for once John wasn't going to worry about the other guy. He'd made it back. This was all his—Rodney in his arms, and the creak of their house settling into the dark around them, and the new shed in their back yard.

And a job where he could walk into work and be saluted, and have his men know his boyfriend was waiting for him at home.

John thought maybe somewhere, Greg was smiling.

  


_End._

**Author's Note:**

> Where is the strangest or hardest place you've ever slept? For me, it was in solitary confinement at Alcatraz when I was working on a special project there. I got to stay overnight (something you can't do on a regular tour) and when the park rangers said the volunteers could sleep wherever we wanted to, I picked a cell in solitary.
> 
> There was no cot in the room. I used my sleeping bag. The steel floor was curved from all the bodies that had lain there before me. I didn't close the door, for obvious reasons, but it was quiet as a damned tomb in there anyway. Creepy as hell thinking about all the misery that had collected in the corners. Anyway, I will admit some of that, at least, was on my mind when I wrote [_Solitary_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/177613/chapters/261360).


End file.
